By: William A. Galston - wsj.com - November 4, 2025

While this isn’t the first such transformative moment in American history, it may turn out to be the fastest. Four of America’s largest tech firms—Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon—combined have had capital expenditures of $360 billion over the past year, much of it in AI development and data centers. The already hectic pace of these investments is accelerating. OpenAI last month completed its for-profit transition, turning its subsidiary into a public-benefit corporation, which will enable it to mobilize the capital and talent it needs to become a top player. Anthropic, backed by Amazon and Google, could transform businesses; it’s focusing on corporate customers rather than the mass search market. Nvidia, whose advanced chips power AI, just became the world’s first $5 trillion company.

When large corporations and industrial capitalism began to surge in the late 19th century, about half the nation’s workforce was engaged in agricultural work. By 2023 the share working in agriculture had fallen to about 1.6%. As recently as the 1950s, nonfarm manufacturing accounted for about one-third of the U.S. workforce, compared with about 8% this year. In each case, technological innovation accounted for much of the reduction.